


Flyboy

by Darkflames_Pyre



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Air Force, Gen, Introspection, Pilots et al, USAF, references to illness and injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 18:26:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18155444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkflames_Pyre/pseuds/Darkflames_Pyre
Summary: 'I guess that's why Dad has always called me Flyboy.' Boundverse. Pre-'04 Film/TAG-compliant. An old fic, originally posted on fanfiction.net. Cross-posted here for continuity.





	Flyboy

Ever since I was a little kid, I had always known that I would someday fly.

I used to have recurring dreams of just being able to stretch out my arms on either side of my body, and slowly move them up and down. I was convinced when I woke that I could rise up into the air and hover over the weatherboard house, and the fields of our property like there was nothing weighing me down but my own thoughts and memories.

There were many times in my early years that I got my hide tanned by both Dad and Grandpa for climbing up to the highest possible vantage point I could find, and launching myself into the air. I had absolutely no care as to whether I came back down or not, nor whether I was still in one piece when I got there.

It was sometimes the old loft in the barn, but ninety-nine per-cent of the time it was the towering sycamore tree that lived in the front yard. It was full of some of the best branches for climbing; thick and sturdy, with green foliage in the summer, and hidden by the shadow of the evergreen above it in winter, with a tyre swing and rope that my brothers and I spent many hours of our summers swinging on.

It was one of the places I went to be by myself, long into my teens when I needed time away from pesky younger brothers. Even to this day I don't think any of them ever realised where I went when I disappeared for hours at a time. I remember watching them amusedly from my perch as they tried to 'find out where Scotty went', managing not to laugh and give away my position.

Now I think about it, I really am surprised that I didn't get more injuries than the one broken arm I received when I was about ten; and how I was lucky enough that none of my younger brothers had realised what I was up to. Needless to say, I would have been more thoroughly reamed out than I already was when I had gotten home from the hospital, if my brothers had been found to be copying my childhood misdemeanours; as harmless as they had seemed to me at the time. But I guess that I was just infinitely more comfortable in the air than on the ground.

I got my pilot's license when I was seventeen years old, and it was one of the proudest moments of my life. My father was the one to take me out to the McConnell Air Force base, and there I gained my wings; Dad standing proud and erect on the airstrip, as I brought the small Lear back for a smooth landing on the tarmac.

At twenty years old, straight from graduation at Oxford University after my time at Yale, I applied to the U.S. Air Force, and from there, my love for planes and everything sky-related just grew and grew.

I spent nine long months building up my skills and experiences at the Base and on routine missions, until I was finally trained highly enough to achieve my dream of becoming a fighter pilot. The first few assignments were straightforward and run-of-the-mill. I took off with troops to restock active squadrons, and was even dropped for a three month stint in a secret surveillance mission, which admittedly turned a little sour, and got me medals that I didn't want or need. But it wasn't until just before my twenty-second birthday that something happened that really shook me to the core.

It was supposed to be a simple, quick drop of aid supplies in south-eastern Afghanistan, where it was just me, two co-pilots, and the small jet we had been commissioned. The plan was straightforward; zoom in under night's cover, drop the supplies at the specified coordinates, then get our asses out of there and back home, lickety-split, right now bucko; as Johnny would've said.

We were on the home stretch, just about to cross the border; we thought that we were home free. One second, I was assuredly handling the small jet's shift with the barest touch, joking and laughing; the next we were on the ground, Paul was dead, and Tom and I were captured.

I was on crutches for three months; waiting first for surgery, and then for the bones and tissue to knit together properly. And then there were the psychological problems.

Tom had died from a chest shot when I was extracted, and there was the torture we had been put through, as well as the terrible guilt I felt after hearing of my friends' deaths. I freaked out John and Dad both when I confronted them with a gun as they pulled me from nightmares one night, and it took me six months to even think about wanting to get within fifty feet of a plane.

It wasn't the actual sky I was scared of; as far as I was concerned, nothing could touch me up there, but it was the physical sensation of being trapped in the plane itself that really got to me.

I was given an honourable discharge when it appeared that I was 'mentally and physically unfit for service'. It was only partially true; I was still very uneasy about flying, and I still walked with a heavy, albeit painless limp on my left leg, but the exaggerating of the truth about my physical state was Dad's idea over his imminent plans for a rescue organisation. They were helpful in covering my tracks over why I was abandoning a promising military career, even when I eventually nodded and acquiesced to undergoing counselling for my issues when prodded by the Air Base medics. That was the outward story.

Thinking back to my childhood dreaming, it really is no surprise that I was so thrilled when Thunderbird Five was finally put online. I took my first trip up there with John so that I could learn the systems for when it was my turn to man them. It was with the most childish amount of glee that he and I turned off the artificial gravity generator and spent at least three hours chasing each other around the station. It is a secret that only the two of us hold; not even Dad knows that we did it.

It is Thunderbird One that holds the most joy in my heart. My father had just told us about the conception of an idea he had of having an organisation that would solve all manner of worldwide rescue dilemmas, and he wanted me to be the second-in-command. I was only just over my fear of flying, and in truth, it was only the fact that I would be first on the scene of the disaster that prevented me from refusing my father outright; I would be the one to ascertain whether it was safe for my brothers to come in after me. My paranoia was still lingering back then; it may truthfully never entirely fade, but my love of the air has never abated once in my entire life.

John has no concept of understanding my love of flying; he'll talk for hours about the stuff in the sky that he can see from 'Five's view-port, but never gets quite why I get so gung-ho about the idea of being up in the air.

Virgil, though he loves piloting 'Two, is really only concerned with what goes on beneath her hull; always discussing with Brains and Dad on how he could possibly enhance her capabilities.

Gordon and Alan both adore speed, a testament to the accidents both boys have been in as a consequence of going too fast, and the joy that comes from piloting Thunderbird Three. I am the only one of us who has ever known and truly recognised how amazing the feeling of flying under your own power is; as fast as you can go, the skyline and clouds zipping away all around you as you peer out of the cockpit window. Thunderbird One is one of the fastest machines on earth. Capable of reaching 150,000 miles an hour at full throttle, she is one of the only things that to me, make the sky worth flying in.

I think my father recognised that from the moment I received my first model plane on my seventh birthday. He said to me once, that Mom had never had a moment of peace once I realised the lengths to which I could rattle on about jets and fighter planes and the cadets. I think I drove them both nuts with how obsessively I would count every last cent of my allowance in order to buy the latest in aviation magazines, and the kits for every single plane model that I could lay my hands on. I had always told them that I meant to fly one day, and I proved it.

I guess that's why Dad has always called me Flyboy.


End file.
